By Yuri Herrera
Read this over a couple of days at the start of November, 2023
Ten Planets is a collection of speculative/experimental fiction stories. They’re characterised by sparse and perfect language, and an aura of confusion enveloping them; there’s a sense of the reader being in a dream or in deep mist, peering out at the looming forms.
Some of the concepts explored include flat earths, the life of a single sapient bacterium which died of heartbreak (the vespertine coliform), a man who manages ghosts and becomes one, a man stranded on an alien planet who hears of another earthling, which turns out to be a dog, and an exploration of a civilisation where every member has their own private language.
An array of dizzyingly diverse concepts and conceits. The translation is wonderfully transparent, like a plane of glass, but occasionally you catch a bump or a wrinkle obscuring the original Spanish.
One to reread.